


the sound of electro-swing

by relationshipcrimes



Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: Graphic Depictions of Radio Abuse, Grocus feat. Grief Work, Improved Emotional and Mental Wellbeing feat. Logrimmons, Locus's Stupidity feat. LGTM, M/M, Multi, Neon Genesis Evangelion feat. Simmons
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-01
Updated: 2018-08-01
Packaged: 2019-06-19 21:06:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,813
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15518580
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/relationshipcrimes/pseuds/relationshipcrimes
Summary: Fusion AU: Arynasea only has one bed. On the way to save the Reds and Blues, Grif and Locus have to figure some things out. (Pseudo-sequel/spinoff of Prim's Mixing Colors fusion fic.)





	the sound of electro-swing

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Prim_the_Amazing](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Prim_the_Amazing/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Mixing Colors](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14778587) by [Prim_the_Amazing](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Prim_the_Amazing/pseuds/Prim_the_Amazing). 



> sorta kinda unofficially a sequel to this by prim: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14778587/chapters/35288990

Against his better judgment, Locus lets Grif fiddle with the radio even when it’s time for them to sleep.

It’s not an option about whether or not they’re going to sleep. If they’re going to extract people alive and leave no casualties, they need to be well-rested and ready to work. (Keeping people alive through missions is infinitely harder than leaving no one alive, which Locus did not expect and Locus remains embarrassingly worse at than he’d like, but the difficulty of the task of living and keeping people alive confirms his suspicions and resolutions every time: murder is indeed the coward’s way out.) The trip to the Reds and Blues’ location is more than forty-eight hours away. A human needs to sleep at least once in that time frame. That much is straightforward.

There is just one problem. Very small. Very tiny. Very insignificant. And the very small, very tiny, very insignificant problem goes like this:

Locus, knowing full well from their terrible fusion mishap that Grif would probably implode into terror if he had to sleep in complete silence, allows Grif to fiddle with the radio; Locus further allows Grif to use the singular bed while Locus reclines the pilot's seat to nap there; the cot is on the ground level and stashed away across the cockpit in the corner; Grif appears to be  _incapable_ of choosing a singular radio station or playlist; Grif gets up every two minutes to change the song (before the song is even done, often); Locus is  _unfortunately_ aware that a person can't exactly fall asleep if he's getting up every two minutes to fiddle with a radio, which Locus, eventually, tells Grif so.

"Yeah I know but it's just, y'know, I'm trying to find something that fits?" Grif says.

Locus suspects that Grif has indeed found something that fits: Grif, too, bounces through twelve different mental channels within the space of two minutes. "Lie down," he orders.

"I'm going! I'm going!"

Grif lies back down. He stays there for two minutes. Gets back up.

"You will not save your friends without sleep," Locus snaps.

Grif flinches. "You don't have to keep holding it over my head! I'm trying!"

Locus knows Grif is trying. Locus, in fact, is itching with the memory of how much Grif is (Grocus was) trying. Locus _has_ to reel his irritation back in, or he's going to be not only pissed off with Grif, but pissed off with himself. 

"If the radio is going to be a distraction, I'm turning it off," Locus says.

"No, wait wait wait!" Grif cries. "I can do it, I swear! I'll pick up station and stick to it!"

Locus clenches his fingers around Arynasea's controls. His own eyes are beginning to burn with sleep deprivation. "Pick  _one_."

Grif picks one. Goes back to the cot. Lies down.

Lies quietly.

Locus takes a deep breath.

Grif rolls over.

Locus sets Arynasea for autopilot and closes his eyes. 

Grif keeps rolling over.

"...Can I change the station  _one more_ time? It'll be the last time I swear I promi--"

"No," says Locus, and fights to keep his eyes closed. The last time he slept was before he found Lopez's head, which was nearly thirty-six hours ago.

Behind him, Locus can hear Grif shifting and squirming and scratching. "Then can I--"

" _No_ ," says Locus.

Grif groans and moans and grumbles and mumbles. 

“Go,” and Locus has to stop himself from adding _the fuck_ , “to sleep.”

"Are you also gonna go to sleep?" says Grif.

"Yes."

"In the pilot's seat?"

"That's what I said."

"Isn't that uncomfortable? Are you okay? Are you one of those white noise generator kind of sleepers? Are you okay with the radio? Am I making too much noise? Am I talking too much? Don't you wanna lie down? Should we turn the radio off? WAIT I GOT IT okay so  _you_ should come and sleep in this cot and then  _I_ can go and sleep in the pilot's seat! I can drive the plane! Fly the plane! Drive the spaceship! Fly the spaceship? Uhhh, drift compatible with the bugship. That'll be great because then I can change the station and stuff and you can sleep and get ready to like save everyone and be super cool and turn over your new leaves--"

Locus's eyes pop back open. "Absolutely not."

"What? Why?! It's a good plan, a great plan, what's wrong with my plan?!"

Locus glares off into space and hates that he, somehow, managed to remove his entire sense of morality for two decades, but somehow never managed to stamp out his sense of being a good host who gives the guest the better bed.

"Stay there," he orders.

"Why?! Just come over here, take the cot, if I'm over in the driver's seat then I can play with the radio! Wait, wait, unless you're one of those people who needs it to be totally quiet for you to sleep? But aren't you like a super badass soldier dude who can do anything? Are you not a fan of like, sleep timers and junk like that? They  help with the silence! They're fabulous! They have human voices and you can imagine there's real people around? Haha that's a weird fact that I just said who knows why--"

"Stop talking."

"I'm just looking out for you! Like,  _I'm_ gonna sleep,  _you're_ gonna sleep, we can like, sleep together? In a friend way! Like, a 'we fused together once and it was great and also you tried to kill me and all my friends which was not so great but we're all cool now' friend kinda way! Look, you can just get up, I'll take the pilot's seat--"

" _No_ ," Locus growls. 

"Okay well honestly I've kind of talked myself into really wanting that pilot's seat so like--" And then Grif rolls out of the cot altogether and gets up and wedges himself  _into the seat with Locus_.

" _What are you doing_ ," says Locus, super calmly and not at all panicked.

"Solving the problem! _I_ wanna keep playing with the radio,  _you_ want me to stay in one place, and also you wanna sleep, so seriously, go sleep in the bed! I've got everything under control! I've got the radio, I've got the sleep timers and stuff like that, even gonna fly the plane--"

This seat is not big enough for two large adult men. Half of Grif's body is practically pressed up against Locus, and he keeps--he keeps  _squirming_ , trying to get comfortable. "This isn't so bad, actually!" Grif says.

"Go away," says Locus. 

"No,  _you_ go away."

Locus isn't allowed to sleep on the bed when there's a guest over. That's just how it works, he doesn't make the rules. "You can't--you're not allowed--why can't you just--" and he cuts himself off there, because he knows why Grif  _can't just sleep with the radio off_ , and why,  _why_ couldn't the awkward accidental fusion be the worst thing about this roadtrip? Why does it have to get worse? 

"Well, if you don't wanna move, that's fine with me, actually! We fit, this is fine--" which is a  _very_ generous definition of  _fit_ considering that Grif is nearly laying on top of Locus at this point "--it's actually super comfy, and now I can play with the radio, and you can, I dunno, be weird and stoic about having your butt in this chair, so congrats? Works out super well! Man, I'm just the fucking best at plans."

Locus holds himself absolutely still and tries not to breathe.

"Oh. Right," says Grif, and turns the radio off with a click, as if they hadn't just been fighting over keeping the stupid radio on for the last half an hour.

The silence is deafening.

Locus stares at Grif and waits for the breakdown. Grif just wedges himself against Locus's side. "If there's no music, we won't fuse," he tells Locus, like  _Locus_ is the skittish cat who can't sleep without the radio to chase away the silence. "We're all good! No danger of fusing here!"

"You're... okay with the quiet," Locus asks.

"Radios are like... not actually all that great to sleep with on," says Grif.

Locus stares at Grif in disbelief bordering on fury.

"Uh, 'cause like, if they're on while you're asleep, what's really the point, you know... You're not even hearing all the human voices that you can imagine are real humans and are really around... But I guess there  _are_ real people around now, ha ha, didn't mean to imply you're not real, you're super real," Grif mumbles, his voice petering out, the run-on sentences unspooling like soft yarn: "like actually real, and I totally know you're real because I touched your face and also I'm basically lying with my face on your man-titty and also we fused which was cool, oodles and noodles of cool, except I guess you didn't like that... which is why there's no music, and it's all fine. We're fine." Grif yawns again. "We're, um, gonna be fine. This is a great solution. I'm fantastic at plans. This whole plan to save Simmons and like everyone else is going to be great."

Locus listens to Grif’s soft breath on his chest, knows that Grif’s eyes are still open. Wide and vulnerable. This is the man who helped defend Chorus, a man who’d been through a very real war against Locus and Felix’s best, and Grif came out of it soft and warm and breathing shakily (but still as evenly as he can) against Locus’s chest. And Locus opens his mouth, and then closes it again, and opens it again, and eventually just gives it up as a bad job, because this, here, with half of Grif's body mashed up against Locus's, is the quietest that Grif's been this entire trip, and that's definitely the only reason Locus doesn't mind the gentle warmth of Grif's stomach.

They stay that way for ages, Locus holding still, feeling Grif fall asleep, and carefully keeps his head blank and empty the whole way through.

He only slips once, just before he drifts off to sleep, and that's enough for him to think a terrible thought that tells him that no matter how hard he tries, he will _never_ be fully redeemed, and will _never_ be a good person again, that he’ll have no choice but to try and try to make up for these dark parts of himself and never truly succeed: he thinks, in the half-conscious daze of the start of a sleep cycle, that Grif is the kind of person who deserves to have some kind of peace, no matter who might have to die for it.

Locus can turn over a new leaf, but the forest remains the same.

 

* * *

 

 

_(There’s a little motel on the edge of the desert, dirty and squat in the night sand, winking with low lights through grimy windows.  They’d rolled up in a sleek car that’s a little too old to be worth anything, and the receptionist hadn’t said anything about checking in two men to the same room at three in the morning._

_The motel is en route to the next job. They’re ahead of schedule in terms of travel, because the mark won’t be reaching his ritzy Vegas Quadrant hotel until four days from now; the Vegas Quadrant is more expensive for room and board, and because his partner isn’t in a rush to get there before they need to be—(but that can’t be right)--his partner is always in a rush, hungry for the next job, the next shoot-up, the next firefight. There’s only one bed in the motel room. This feels familiar._

_The shower in the bathroom shuts off. The sound of electroswing comes from the radio in the bathroom before that shuts off, too._

_He unpacks clothes and rations and guns to the bedside table. “There’s no water pressure at all,” comes a voice from the bathroom, and Simmons emerges toweling his hair dry, another towel wrapped low on his hips, not a single cyborg part in sight on his beanpole body. Simmons never wears a shower towel below the hips._

_Grocus’s heart leaps at the sight of him._

_Simmons frowns. Now that Grocus remembers that Simmons is a cyborg, there’s surgery scars and robot bits popping up all over him like flowers. “What?” asks Simmons. “What’re you looking at me like that for?”_

_“Nothing,” says Grocus quickly. “You knew the shower pressure would be bad. It’s not a five star hotel.” And then he forgets what other snarky comment he was supposed to say, and he just winds up sitting on the bed, watching Simmons pull on a pair of boxers (Simmons doesn’t wear boxers), memorizing the long lean lines of Simmons’s back muscles, looking at what he can’t touch._

_“We could be staying at a five star hotel if we went to the Vegas Quadrant,” Simmons complains. “And took some better jobs.”_

_“High end hotels never serve good food,” Grocus sniffs._

_“Not like your frozen pizza is any better.” Simmons turns around, hangs the towel around his freckled neck in a cocky, arrogant move that looks oddly in Simmons's body. “Okay, you’re really kind of weirding me out, looking at me like that. Seriously, what the fuck’s going on?”_

_“I feel like I haven’t seen you in forever,” Grocus says without knowing why._

_Simmons smiles, an odd look of fond amusement that Simmons’s face has never done before. It’s a smile from years and years before Chorus, and it makes Grocus’s heart ache. “You saw me like, ten minutes ago,” says Simmons._

_“No--what? It--was longer than that,” says Grocus, but now he’s not sure._

_“First you forget all of Red Team’s ammo, and now you forget time,” Simmons mutters._

_The sting of the insult is so familiar. “I missed you so much,” Grocus blurts out._

_“What? The fuck? Are you serious?”_

_“What kind of question is that?” Grocus asks, worried. “I’d never joke around. Not if you don’t want me to. I don’t want to be annoying.”_

_Simmons stares. For the first time, all his attention is on Grocus._

_“Do you want me to?” Grocus says. “I can if you’d like, I just… It’s easier if you just tell me what you’d want. Just tell me what to do. I won’t mess it up if you’d just tell me what to do.”_

_Simmons frowns. Gingerly, he steps up to the bed, one knee on the bedsheets, legs over Grocus’s lap, until he’s straddling Grocus, and Grocus’s arms come around his waist like they’ve done this a thousand times before in a thousand motels between a thousand jobs, now that Siris is gone. The scarred line where Simmons’s flesh meets his cyborg arm feels so small under Grocus’s huge fingers. Tiny man. Tiny gifts. Oh, god, he doesn’t want to mess it up, he’s going to mess it up--_

_Simmons says softly, “You’re fine the way you are.”_

_Grocus flinches._

_This doesn’t make sense. Simmons would never say that. Nobody would say that, Fe--nobody would ever say that. Grocus says nervously, “No, it’s fine--you can tell me I’m too lazy and fat and broken and crazy like you always do.”_

_Grocus is so tall that Simmons still has to look up even when he’s sitting on his lap. “You’re fine the way you are,” says Simmons again. His voice brooks no argument (the harsh tone of the mercenary scourge of the Federal Army). “Maybe you got a little messed up, from the colony or the moon base or some other massacre on some other battlefield, but it doesn’t matter to me. Why do you think I stuck around so long? Why would you think I would care? Even if you’re broken, you’re just fine for me.”_

_And Simmons presses one, two, three kisses to Grocus’s lips, in that gentle way Grocus has always wanted him to but never got, not even in the good days before the merc jobs went bad, no taste of Simmons’s chapstick, only the vague hint of cheap cigarettes (that Simmons would never smoke). Grocus kisses back like Simmons is the first drink of water he’s had in weeks, soft, desperate; he wants so much that he doesn’t know what it is he wants anymore._

_“Come on,” says Simmons against his lips. “I’m tired. Let’s go to sleep, and you’ll see me tomorrow when Arynasea finds the Reds and Blues.”_

_With the feeling of Simmons in his arms, Grocus lets himself close his eyes.)_

 

* * *

 

 

Grocus floats back to consciousness. Defuses like butter melting in the sun. Grif buries his face in Locus’s chest and hugs tight; Locus tucks his face into Grif’s hair; they drift back to sleep, and either of them remember much in the morning.


End file.
